Chapter Twenty-Five
I dropped the CinSymbiant clothes back at Deja-Vous the next morning. They rented or sold their wares and offered me the gown and clips for $600 but I settled for the gray contact lenses for $30. I'd enjoyed wearing undercover eyes and might want to use them in the future. Like a lot of people with vivid blue eyes, I was tired of being remembered only for that.
I did have to pay for the three missing hairpins I'd let the Cocaine groupie have. A buck-forty. I should have charged her the going rate for a Cocaine memento. Might have been able to afford the gown then.
It also turned out that the "owner" had ordered that I be given a twenty percent "handling discount" on the entire package. Cute. Call him Cocaine, Christophe, or Snow, this guy didn't miss a trick.
I hopped into Dolly with a high heart, my laptop in the passenger seat. Quicksilver was not institutionally welcome and I was visiting the Nevada Historical Society library to look up missing-person candidates for the lovers buried in Sunset Park. I'd even called the police captain Ric counted as a source, Kennedy Malloy.
I almost swallowed my wisdom teeth when an alto woman's voice answered to the name. She did tell me, reluctantly, the mint year of the silver dollars found at the site, 1921. Still in circulation in the seventies. I couldn't tell if her reluctance was the usual police reticence, or if she was as startled as I was to suddenly find Ric a bridge to a strange woman.
When I thought about it, it figured that his inside man at the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police would be a woman. What woman wouldn't want to tell Ric anything he'd want to know? Maybe I was prejudiced. As I drove I replayed our meeting. Had we been hit with some love potion that had been trapped with the dead lovers all these decades? Everyone liked to think romance was magic, a form of mysterious chemistry, but what if it was something catching, like the plague?
I was glad to be heading for a place where I'd always been able to keep my feet on the ground and my head in the here and now: a library.
A quick online search revealed the Clark County Library had the Las Vegas Evening Review Journal from 1930 through 1958 -when it had long been just the LV Review Journal-on microfilm. I explained "no dogs in the library" to Quick and soon had Dolly aimed toward the University of Nevada Las Vegas. The Clark County Library was only a block or so from campus on E. Flamingo Road.
Once there I settled in, grateful modern microfilm was nothing like those old reels of white-on-black filmstrips people had to reel past at seasick speeds years before, If I found anything of interest, I could simply print out a facsimile for a small fee.
My only distraction: the ads for what were now vintage clothes... oh my! Cheap as Saturday night sin. If only time travel was a post-Millennium Revelation option!
When I got home, I noticed a scent of lemon oil and Mr. Clean. Someone had been tidying the premises. Quick was out. That wasn't unusual.
During our first night in the cottage, he'd pawed open the French lever on one of the living room windows. I didn't know he'd been gone until he jumped back in that way when I was making breakfast. I tried tying the window lever shut, but he used another one. The next night I tied them all shut... and he untied one with his teeth. This was not a dog that would sleep by a cold fake fireplace all night.
So I now left the window over the laundry table open and Quick spent his nights doing whatever really big dogs do. I couldn't blame him for not wanting to be cooped up. I just hoped he didn't get hurt. Even Superdog could run into trouble.
I put down my photocopies and headed along the hall to the bedroom to change into something comfy, like T-shirt and shorts. My image in the mirror at the hall's always-dusky end made me pause. Last night when I'd come in, it seemed as if I had glimpsed someone else in that mirror, a different girl in a different vintage dress.
Then my double vision had cleared and I saw it was me, only I had blue eyes in that reflection, not gray, despite the color-dampening contact lenses. Weird. But the hall was ill lit with a single overhead fixture, and I'd been drinking, not to mention scared and stressed. Now, in daylight, I just looked like me, only more casually dressed in slacks and a knit top. I'd barely changed before the doorbell rang with an old-fashioned melodic chime.
When I rushed to open it, I found a little green man standing on my stoop. No, he didn't have the big black bug-eyes of an extra-terrestrial. He just looked like an impish offspring of the Jolly Green Giant of TV commercial fame. The silver sandals he wore did nothing for his hairy hammertoes.
No ho-ho-ho from him. "Sign here, lady." As he handed me a computerized device I noticed a green delivery truck outside the open gate. The print on the side read Mercury Express. Homegrown Delivery Service.
The plain white box was big, flat, and light, but way too deep to be pizza, unless it was a triple deep-dish Chicago style one. Besides, it was only faintly warm from the summer's day and the sun-heated back of a metal truck.
I gave the green guy a three-dollar tip and got a nasty look in return. "I should get hazardous duty pay for delivering to Nightwine's place, lady."
Twinkletoes stalked away, chiming. I hadn't noticed the bells on the toe sandal straps before. Only in Las Vegas, where every service person wore bizarre themed costumes. It had been a costume, hadn't it?
I was chuckling to myself when I laid the box on the dining table and pulled off the annoying invisible tape at the sides. I heard the encouraging crinkle of tissue paper.
This was beginning to look like a present. Had Ric -?
Okay, my mind was jogging on only one track lately.
Oh. No! It was the gown, and clips, from Deja-Vous. A sheet of white vellum written on in thick dark burgundy ink read: "With my deepest compliments and self-interest. Snow."
Amid the folds of black velvet coiled a slender lock of white hair, maybe nine inches long. Then I noticed a P.S. under the note's signature: "If I give you a piece of my power, maybe you won't feel compelled to cut it off, cut it all off, my modern-day Delilah."
I could practically hear him purring those words. Ridiculous. I couldn't, wouldn't accept anything from him, and had, in fact, refused to accept the "handling discount" even though the clerk had whined about making out a new receipt. You might have thought the guy feared his far-distant boss.
I was more angry than annoyed now. The soft lock of hair reminded me, so painfully, of my Achilles that it brought tears to my eyes. I couldn't resist the temptation of recapturing the lost sensation of petting my lost Achilles, of reaching out to touch the long, pale hair.
The damned thing... moved, faster than I could see. Like a serpent it coiled around my right wrist, then tightened into something hard and silver and familiar. One-half of a handcuff.
Gooseflesh ran up my right arm along with an interior shiver that made me shudder. As soon as I'd registered the lock's silken circling of my wrist I'd felt it harden into cold metal.
The doorbell rang again.
Honestly! Couldn't anyone just leave me alone today?
I stomped to the door in my bare feet and pulled it violently open.
The man on the stoop looked familiar, but totally human at least. Well, sort of. I placed him: the police guy from the Sunset Park crime scene. That bigoted Detective Haskell. How had he gotten in here without going past the security system and Godfrey? Obviously, the delivery service had been passed through security, because it was a previous visitor, given the crack the guy made about Nightwine's tips.
"Yes?" I asked. "You want?"
He walked in like he owned the place and planned to rent it to someone else.
"You. Downtown."
"Me? There must be some mistake."
"Yeah. Yours. This isn't an invitation." He grabbed my arm.
I pulled away.
He jerked it back so hard I grunted protest.
The sound of a motorcycle revving its engine distracted us both.
We had not heard an engine. It was the deep sustained growl of a hundred-and-fifty-pound dog, like something you might encounter in a tiger cage. Quicksilver was standing in the hallway arch, moving forward.
"Jesus!" Haskell didn't drop my arm. He drew his semiautomatic from a rear paddle holster with the other hand and pointed it at Quicksilver.
"No!" I twisted myself between Haskell and Quicksilver. No more dogs died on my watch, in my own place. "Don't shoot. Quicksilver, no! Sit."
Haskell unleashed his own version of a growl. "Get that animal locked out of my sight or he's chopped liver."
Quicksilver was strong, big, and fast, but I wasn't going to risk him against a hail of bullets, and I was sure Haskell was the type to overkill.
"Back, boy!" I didn't have a good place to pen him up, so I pushed him into the kitchen, and then shut the pantry door on him. "Stay!"
When I turned, Haskell was right behind me, stuffing the gun down the front of his pants as proud and pleased as if it was something else.
My heart was still pounding from the sudden threat to Quicksilver, but I found my calm, cool TV reporter voice. "What's this about, Detective?"
"Dead freak at the Inferno and you're all over the security tapes mixing it up with her in fancy dress. Very fancy dress." He eyed me slowly, as if I was a naked centerfold.
"If you want to talk to me about it-"
"Talk, nothing. I want your fingerprints. Your DNA." He swaggered closer on each sentence.
Quicksilver's claws were bounding against the shut door. It wouldn't hold him forever. I had to get out of here before then. Cooperation, capitulation, was the best move for both of us.
"I'm onto you," Haskell said, getting literally in my face. "You're not ex-FBI, lady. You're nothing more than a suspect, a damn likely one. You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to an-" He stopped to stare at my wrist. "You're already wearing what's left of one set of handcuffs you've escaped?"
"It's a fashion statement," I snarled. Damn Snow for making me look like an escaped felon!
My show of resistance gave Haskell the spur he needed.
"You'll be making a statement, all right." Haskell spun me around to snap both my wrists behind my back into the real thing. "You damn Goth punks with your fake prison tattoos and your heavy-metal jewelry. Think you can sneer at the police. Think again."
He pushed me face-first against the nearest wall. I avoided a broken nose only be turning my head fast.
My heart was pounding so hard I could hardly hear anything over it. No wonder. First there'd been the threat to Quicksilver, now the swift administration of my favorite phobia: bound and in the hands of bullies. I didn't know what had happened long ago to kick it off, but this scene was much too close to that for continuing sanity.
I had to calm down and think.
Meanwhile, the bastard was indicating that I should spread my legs by nudging my inner thighs with the muzzle of his semiautomatic, simultaneously patting me down and feeling me up fore and aft.
Rage and fear mixed into a potent stew inside my chest, but my head kept fighting for control. He was police. He could maul me but he couldn't really hurt me.
"You white-trash bitches," he was muttering. "Always bad-mouthing white guys and you turn around hot to be Meskin meat. All that good white skin wasted as black boys' and bite boys' meat." He pulled my hair, hard, back to examine both sides of my neck as if I were a horse for sale. "No freaking bite boy nibbles. Wrists clean, but... oh, too bad, somebody's been bruisin' 'em."
Yeah! Him!
"Bet you've done this bit before, babe, and liked it."
He jerked on my handcuffs. I bit my lip to silence a cry. Evidence of fear and pain only encouraged sadists like Haskell. "Maybe you give out from the femoral arteries. That it? You a thigh baby?"
A deep voice tolled like a basso bell in my mind. You have a witness.
Haskell's head jerked up, as if he had heard it too. "Is there someone here?"
I could hear a faint throb of fear. Like all bullies, he feared someone bigger. And, yes, of course! I did have a witness!
"Nightwine," I called to the ceiling, remembering his security fetish. "Do something!" Just because his security cameras were rolling 24/7 didn't mean he was actually watching my particular episode of VPV; Vegas Police Violence at this moment. What could he do? Or Godfrey for that matter? Other than "witness."
The gun barrel left my thighs as Haskell stepped back to point it due north.
"You got an accomplice up there? In the attic? This is only a one-story place. Answer, bitch!"
"Nobody else is here, but this cottage stands on Hector Nightwine's property. He produces all the CSI shows."
He grabbed and pulled my hair again. "You think I care who you service?"
"He's my boss and a very paranoid man. The whole estate is covered with security devices. You're on Candid Camera, Detective Haskell."
"I don't believe you," Haskell said.
But he was nervous now and backed away from me. "Crazy too. Talking to the ceiling. You're making it way too easy. First I got you on impersonating an officer, and now the biggie, Murder One. Bet Cadaver Boy will be real upset about this. Too bad."
He grabbed my handcuffs and used them to pull, push, and half-drag me out of the cottage. How'd he get in here, anyway?
I saw his car parked on the street. He'd scaled the wall, so he must have disabled a section of the alarm wiring. Even better: Nightwine had him filmed violating personal property without a warrant outside as well as in, like the L.A. police getting into OJ. Simpson's Brentwood property after finding his estranged wife dead elsewhere. Johnnie Cochran could make quite a case of this. Too bad he was dead. Then again...
Haskell slammed me into the back seat of his unmarked car, not bothering to push my head down so it didn't bang the doorframe. I managed to duck, having seen enough crime shows on TV and enough live arrests in Wichita to know the drill.
I fell sideways on a seat that smelled of sweat, vomit, and strawberry car freshener. I almost added to the vomit and was half-sorry I didn't, although I wouldn't want Haskell to know what he'd done to my nervous system.
I managed to work myself upright, despite the bruising handcuffs. I had excellent lower body strength from self-defense workouts. Too bad it hadn't paid to use them.
He drove me down the Strip, a slow, public route that allowed people to gawk at me when the car paused at the interminable stoplights. I'd known cops. I'd worked with them. Most of them were good, dedicated people. But when one went bad, he went very bad indeed.
At the cross street of Paradise, I spotted Quicksilver weaving in and out of the colorful trail of tourists on the sidewalks like a shaggy, ghostly greyhound.
The pantry door would have to be completely replaced by the resident brownies, but I didn't mind. It was good to know he was nearby and keeping it as discreet as an animal his size could.
Good dog.
Chapter Twenty-Six
"Downtown" was more than a figure of speech in Las Vegas. The main police department offices were there, near the Fremont Hotel, but homicide, aka crimes against persons, had long since gotten its own building in the Sin City That Never Sleeps.
Haskell left me handcuffed to a small, scarred table in a miserable cubicle of a room with soundproof tile on the ceiling. (I wasn't about to yell to that eye-in-the sky ceiling for help, anyway.) In front of me was a table bearing nothing but one empty ashtray stinking of tar and nicotine. I was sitting in a chair so plastic and imbued with sweat, fear, and other less mentionable bodily fluids that it made my skin crawl.
I really needed to go to the bathroom but knew that if I asked anyone he'd make sure I didn't. I'd covered crime stories. I knew how cops made suspects squirm by any means. So I was guilty of... what? Back exposure with intent to seduce? It actually crossed my mind to wonder if Snow would bail me out. It was probably his set-up anyway. His note had implied that I had power of a sort. Too bad nobody had clued me in on exactly what it was.
"Miss... Street?" The woman who poked her head in the door was blonde but hard-edged. Maybe five years older than I was. Carried her shoulders like she worked out and had mojo authority. Was a pretty cool chick, really. Ric's captain friend. Oh, shit. I nodded.
"I'm going to have to testify to your phone call proving prior interest in the Inferno, from witnessing the Sunset Park crime scene."
"Be my guest."
"Being a hard-ass won't help you."
"Funny. I thought telling the truth might."
"Haskell says before this came up you impersonated an officer on that crime scene."
"I implied, he inferred. He was being sexist."
Blondie's poker face didn't move. She faced sexist every day.
"And racist," I added.
A little of the ice broke. She really did like Ric.
"Haskell has issues," she conceded. Malloy started to leave, then hesitated. "You might want to reconsider saying anything."
I nodded. Message received. My truth could be my fall. I felt a shiver of silver moving along my arm to my hand. A white flash settled around my neck on a chain. Won't you wear my ring. No!
Haskell poked his red, hypertensive face into the room. "Guess what. Guess you do have a man upstairs. Your 'lawyer' is here."
All right! My lawyer. Pretty fast service from someone. Hmm.
"I hope you haven't cuffed her," I heard an authoritative voice say in the hall. A boldly black-and-white CinSim rolled into the room, maybe 270 pounds of designer suit. He had a baritone deep enough to take out the Three Tenors. Cool enough to chill dry ice.
"My name is Mason," he said. "Perry Mason."
Not Johnnie Cochran, but not bad.
Nightwine must have caught up with the tape pretty damn quick after we left. Who else would send Perry Mason, for God's sake?
I sat up straight in my scuzzy jailhouse chair. I couldn't wait for my next line. "My name is Street. Delilah Street."
He took the chair across from me like a pope deigning to sit on a toadstool. "What a coincidence. My personal assistant's name is Street. Delia Street. May I call you-?"
"Delilah."
He looked uneasy for the first time "Delilah. I like it. Now, Delilah Street, how do we get you out of this mess?"
"I thought that was your job."
"Here, yes. The convincing explanations later are up to you, young lady."
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The Snow groupie had been found dead in a Dumpster at the hotel's rear the morning after my jaunt to the Inferno. She'd been strangled. Her image flashed into my mind's eye, a harmless-looking middle-aged woman, really, except for the fanatic's mania in her eyes and voice.
The hotel security cameras had recorded everything, including shots of this very woman looking green when Snow had come on to me. Cameras had also recorded our fight over the hairpins later and my obvious rebuff. The police theory was she'd come after a lock of my hair later and I'd killed her. Groupies could be annoying, but the police scenario did presume a certain element of self-defense on my part.
Perry had picked up on that immediately, ace attorney that he was in book and on film. When he drove me home in his black fifties Caddy convertible that felt like Dolly's love match, I told him I'd finished my evening at the Inferno breaking and entering the executive offices. He frowned impressively.
"Pleading innocence by virtue of being occupied in another crime is not a viable defense. Miss, er, Delilah Street. Also, from your own testimony, you left the office in plenty of time to commit mayhem elsewhere."
"Didn't the hotel cameras capture the body being Dumpstered?"
"A good question. No. A black batlike shape covered the lens for several minutes that early morning."
"Should they be looking for a vampire?"
"Perhaps. The neck was not marked by a ligature, or tooth marks, it was mauled. It would be impossible to tell if a vampire bite was involved. You, of course, are not a vampire?"
I showed my pearly whites, blunt and even. "Not to my knowledge. In fact, I have a deep aversion to vampires."
"Doesn't everyone?"
"Not vamp tramps and Snow groupies."
"You think this woman could have had an opportunity to approach this 'Snow' person after you left his office, and he killed her?"
Was Snow a killer? I didn't know. What did I know... ?
"The woman was demented," I said. "All those Snow fans are. You should see them claw each other in the mosh pit to be one of the so-called lucky few he bends down to kiss."
"On the mouth?"
"Yeah!"
I recalled how Snow rose after each extended smooch and placed his palm on the latest conquest's forehead like a televangelist to push her back into the crowd. How the woman fell, senseless, into a buoying mass of her sister fanatics. And then disappeared beneath the swell of clamoring wannabe recipients of what they called the Brimstone Kiss.
"Those mosh-pit women clot like those spawning fish called grunion," I said. "Someone could disappear in their midst and never been seen again until-"
"The Dumpster."
"Exactly."
"I've seen the security film the police confiscated," Perry said. "You don't look dressed to kill."
"What?"
"The woman was strangled. It took force. The killer would have been marked, or disarranged. The police haven't gotten a warrant for your rented clothes, but Delia tells me that Deja-Vous says that you have them."
"You want them?"
"I have access to private labs. Better we know any damaging evidence first."
"Be my guest." I brought him inside and gave him the big white box when we got to my cottage. A silver bracelet slid down my wrist with the gesture of surrender, a bangle of pink cubic zirconias. Snow was so predictably partial to pink. Until now, I'd had no idea he could add jewels to my silver gewgaws. Hmm.
"Meanwhile," Perry said before leaving, "don't speak to the press. Call me if the police approach you for any reason. And let my office do the investigating."
I nodded twice, but sat the fence on the third condition.
"Don't worry about a thing, Delilah. From what you've told me that detective is the one in trouble."
There was one thing I wasn't going to tell Perry Mason or anyone else, because it might make me very unconvincing: that I'd glimpsed an apparition of a woman in my hallway mirror the night before the little green delivery elf and Detective Haskell had barged into my cottage this morning. But the more I thought about it, the more I recalled about that apparition of a woman. Woman? She had been a girl and she'd worn blue velvet with a sweetheart neckline. At least the bodice was blue velvet. The long skirt and short petal-shaped sleeves were blue taffeta. Definitely a late-forties get-up.
Her hair had been light brown, pulled up and puffed out at the sides to resemble the the sixteenth century heart-shaped headdress seen in portraits of Mary Queen of Scots. She'd been as doomed as that beheaded queen of Scotland, but she was a child of the 1940s, every detail screamed that. She was the dead body from Sunset Park, sure as God made little green cacti, and she was dressed exactly as I'd known she had been clothed.
How did I know this? I'd sensed some of it the day when Ric and I had met and melded dowsing for the dead... with mental medium tricks... with passion by proxy.
Yet it shook me all over again, to see her standing in my hall mirror. Details I'd sensed when Ric and I found her-wrist corsage, sterling silver heart locket at her throat, beseeching baby eyes, everything-had reassembled whole in my own hallway. Had even replaced my own reflection. She couldn't have been more than seventeen and was about to be mowed down like Bambi's mother.
Somehow, I understood she came here because her spirit knew I was trying to identify her, but the vivid memory of an apparition wasn't evidence I could use with others, except Ric. I felt angry and helpless. And I knew from her lost, plaintive eyes that she had just felt helpless, which made me even angrier.
So. What solid facts did I have? I had the information I'd copied off the microfilm reader, and I had the testimony of the ghost in my mirror, mute for the moment, but plenty eloquent anyway. I was free to keep investigating for now. My lawyer (I did kinda like that term) had said the police evidence against me was only circumstantial, but a black hair had been found on one of the three Deja-Vous hairpins and I knew DNA testing would prove it was mine, although it would take time.
Thank God.
Perry Mason took the dress box. I thanked him profusely for all his help and eyed Quicksilver, hanging back by the oleander bushes bordering the estate fence. He'd been keeping up with a lot of Detroit steel today.
I pushed the code to open the gate for Mr. Mason to drive out. As soon as his car's shark-sharp tail fins had vanished, Quick was at my side, slurping my hands and growling in alternate rhythm.
"I know. Our hands and paws were tied, boy, but it's over."
I had a brain-splitting migraine, my wrists and shoulders were sore, and my soul was soiled.
Otherwise, I'd come out of the ordeal pretty well.
When we walked back into the cottage, Godfrey was waiting. He must have used the rear kitchen door.
"Welcome back, Miss. Mr. Nightwine has ordered dinner in for you. Not to worry, it's from the Bellagio. Medallions of beef for you and a fine steak, very rare, for Master Quicksilver, as well as a soup bone from the Paris hotel. My master also left this written message and bade me not to keep you from your recuperation."
Godfrey refused to stay for thanks, but bowed his way out immediately.
Quicksilver sat salivating over his napkin-covered silver tray, so I wafted off the linen and let him have at it in the kitchen.
Godfrey had left the other tray, bearing a single white rose in a sterling silver vase, on the breakfast table. The mellow Las Vegas dusk was tinting my window rose-gold. I pulled a damask napkin off a nouvelle cuisine feast of tender beef and garlic mashed potatoes to die for and chocolate mousse, but read the note before I ate.
My Dear Miss Street,
Godfrey has left, along with these culinary offerings, a tape of the recent events in the cottage I have allowed you to use. A copy of said scene rests in my private safe. Any trace of these events has been erased from the streaming tape in my central security system. No one will ever see or know of these distressing events save you or I. I am only keeping a record for prosecution purposes, should the need arise and should you wish to pursue such a course.
I am most distressed that the authorities in any form should violate my property and your rights in this brutish fashion. All of my resources are at your command should you decide to proceed against this creature in any manner.
Your devoted servant, Hector Nightwine
Okay. I sniffled a little with my dinner, which was superb and didn't move unless I did it.
